French firm Alstom will provide an automatic communication-based train control (CBTC ) system for Santiago de Chile metro’s 20km line 1.

Under the €50m ($70.7m) deal with Chilean operator Metro de Santiago, the company will design, build, install and maintain its Urbalis solution that integrates data transmission by radio.

Once finished, the system is expected to cut intervals between trains and boost the hourly passenger traffic of 1 million passengers by 20%.

Work is expected to begin in September 2010.